Boss thread. Probably outside the pop being discussed, but I have never seen a thread to mention Scandal - great rock group - Mami is a smokin guitar player, and her taste in axes rivals any Western rockers, beautiful guitars, Strats, Les Pauls, a lovely Guild Starfire.
Some more Shibuya-Kei through the years... Qypthone were a bit of a latecomer to the scene but they are a somewhat unique take on the genre. There's not much on YouTube but this'll do...
One of my favourite Shibuya scenesters is Horie Hirohisa who was responsible for many productions. His outfit Neil & Iraiza produced some fantastic music. This one is an interesting twist on the Shibuya-kei aesthetic. Repurposing the exact arrangement of the Madness song Our House but applying it to a completely new composition.
Although this is borderline Shibuya-kei Chocolat was firmly an indie artist at the time and worked with a lot of the scenes characters. This track, from the album Hamster, is an absolute killer.
This is a weird one. Chappie was a virtual idol created by artists Groovivisions. An album was released featuring different producers, many from the Shibuya scene, and different vocalists. This lead single was written and produced by Pal@Pop who went on to no noticeable success at all. Not particularly Shibuya-ish it's an absolute 'banger' though and a fantastic production.
Very much a Shibuya-kei act, albeit maybe a second wave, Capsule was the first act for producer Yasutaka Nakata who went on to write/producer JPOP smash Perfume as well as many other acts. Capsule became more EDM as they went on but this track is pure Shibuya-kei goodness.
Cymbals are a band who's sound was more Horie Hirohisa and Ben Folds than more traditional Shibuya-Kei but there's a lot melodically and aesthetically linking them. This is a typical piano heavy track for them but they grew into a diverse and powerful unit over the years. They split in early 2000s.
First I heard of Shibuya kei, though I think I may have stumbled across this sound, just didn't know the term. LOVE these trax, instant fan of Karie - she's really out there.
It's a really hard to pin down sound. The early influences were from UK indie pop. The first real wave of Shibuya-kei is from 1990-1995 ish. That stuff is a mixture of heavy use of samples, jazz, pop, and dance. The sort of second wave of the sound had a lot more programmed drum 'n' bass sounding stuff. Superfast programming and more influenced by computer game music and Picopop (a genre based in 8-bit and computer game sounds and music). Like I say it's a really nebulous term - like most genres are - but I'll be posting more from the lineage that Shibuya-Kei started. I'd also like to try and write something a bit more substantial in an attempt to define the aesthetic of the genre.
Whoa lol, and here I thought it was a town district. Looking forward to whatever you come up with - sounds like one of those things that gets more undefinable the more you define it ! But I get the gist of it . . . I think.
Thanks for posting that, Yasujiro. The thing is, I really don't find it very bizarre - but that's me... This has "real" instrumentation with violin, bass, guitar, accordion, drums, etc. And though not totally conventional, the songs actually have these instruments "arranged" - as opposed to the relentless thunkity-thunk-thunk synth-pop posted in much of this thread (such as "Refrain ga Sakendeiru" by Yuming).
I was quite slow on the uptake with Scandal. I knew of them but didn't listen to them properly so thought they were kinda generic or not that interesting. Boy was I ever wrong on that - you're right, they don't get mentioned very much, whereas bands like Band-Maid get quite a few callouts, though I think Scandal are much better ... I think possibly because they don't play a remotely western influenced form of rock music and possibly because it can be mistaken for Pop. Judy &Mary, Rebecca, Princess Princess are other rock/JPop bands that don't get the time of day because what they perform has too much individual character, perhaps. Talking of smokin' Oh, you meant the guiyar playing?
My best friend is a Punjabi girl and we used to watch a lot of Bollywood movies together. We lived in a house share with this other guy who was a drummer and massive metal head, and allround hilarious guy. We used to joke about Nordic metal and pirate metal and nekrogoblikon - and Babymetal - and all those other crazy metal mashups and during one of our drinking sessions we invented "Bollymetal", the perfect mashup that as far as we knew had never been done. Sadly I can't play guitar or maybe this would have happened but my amusement when Babymetal got there was surpassed only by how brilliant the song actually is. One of their very best, imo. (I also think Riho is the greatest dancer and wish she'd have joined Babymetal, I want her to have a good career but I don't think she can sing, really ... she's not in this vid but was in the glastonbury clip that went around before the official video)
One of my favorite Japanese rock albums, Flower Travellin Band's 1971 masterpiece, Satori. RIP Joe Yamanaka and Yuya Uchida. Untitled by poetryonplastic, on Flickr
After listening to Jpop to Jmetal in my younger years I can say only a few of the many that I liked in the days have stuck. Which would be Scandal, Zone, Zard (yes the early 90's material from Izumi Sakai is still amazing!!) and on occasion sometimes Japanese Metal. Most of the time now, my Japanese music is Fusion Jazz with records from Ryo Fukui and Hiroshi Suzuki. Still I hope to find some records from Scandal on Vinyl.
Every year I try and make christmas more bearable by breaking out J-Pop christmas stuff. Looking to expand my horizons on this, this year ... Meanwhile ... this is still epically cute.
Japanese songs 日本の歌 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLa68DzyTqRaY2l5y7yKsesNo4mfqROm9K My Playlist i made a while ago, mainly songs from the late Shōwa era. My favorite japanese composers are Tetsuya Komuro, Meiko Nakahara and Kyōhei Tsutsumi. Got down this rabbit-hole in late 2019, now i wondering when my interest will fade.
